Financial pressures continue to provide business executives with opportunities to reduce expenses while generating revenue growth. Procurement decisions, such as purchasing decisions regarding particular products, suppliers, and shipping of purchased products, often have a substantial impact on a business organization's financial bottom line, providing opportunities for reducing expenses as well as increasing revenue. In addition, such procurement decisions often influence the organization's general operation and the quality of goods or services procured by the organization.
Procurement decisions are often complex and involve the analysis of heterogeneous information, which may be constantly evolving, over a period of time. For example, such information may include large volumes of product data, purchaser (or client) requirements, supplier constraints, legal regulations and contractual terms and obligations. Contractual terms and obligations may originate from contracts between the business organization and its various suppliers. Some business organizations may deal with hundreds or even thousands of suppliers, and may therefore have hundreds or thousands of supplier contracts active at any particular time. These supplier contracts define the business terms and conditions between the business organization and the many suppliers.